Monday, March 2, 2015

Marathon Mondays

This semester I have a Monday Wednesday teaching schedule but my Mondays are true marathons with a morning class on Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare, which is an hour and a quarter, and an afternoon seminar, on Advances in Variational Inequalities, Networks, and Game Theory, which is 2 hours and 45 minutes. I do a lot of lecturing in the latter class, although it is a seminar, because I want to make sure to bring all the students who come from different programs on campus to more or less the same level of knowledge.

So, do the math, the sum is 4 hours, which is exactly how long it takes me to run a marathon, which I have done several times in the past (no matter what my training was). I never, ever sit while lecturing.

I love the energy expended on teaching and the energy that I get from my students. Plus, when you have the opportunity to teach subjects that you are passionate about, the time flies (and, yes, many times we go over the time but there is so much to discuss and share).

I love face to face teaching and the interactions with students, which I would really miss if all the classes were online plus teaching is fabulous exercise if you do it right!

And being a professor is also good for your health.

In a study, "Postponed aging in university teachers," Kristjuhan and Taidre write that: In some population groups, human life expectancy is much higher compared
to the average in the population, which can provide new hints to
postpone aging and prolong life. Studies show that university professors
have a later onset of age-related diseases compared with most
population groups. Their productivity mostly increases up to their 60s
and remains high for many years afterward. Aging processes appear later
compared to the average in the population. Studies in Estonia have shown
that university professors have 9 years longer life.

Operations research and economics have a good number of faculty that I have had the privilege of meeting and some even knowing that worked through their 80s and even part of their 90s (Professors George Dantzig, Kenneth Arrow, Leonid Hurwicz, Bill Cooper, Paul Samuelson, and Martin Beckmann, to start). And unlike after running a marathon, in just a few days, if not hours, faculty are raring to go again!

About Me

is the John F. Smith Memorial Professor of Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University for the 2016 Trinity term.
She was a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden for 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.
Her latest book, co-edited with I. Kotsireas and P.M. Pardalos is: Dynamics of Disasters: Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights, published by Springer in 2016. She is also the co-author of the book: Competing on Supply Chain Quality: A Network Economics Perspective, with D. Li, and published in 2016.
She is the author of the book: Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Network Analytics for Perishable Products, co-authored with M. Yu, A.H. Masoumi, and L.S. Nagurney.
She is also the author, with Q. Qiang, of the book: Fragile Networks: Identifying Vulnerabilities and Synergies in an Uncertain World, and several other books.
She is the Founding Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks.